Abandoned Russian churches

For an idea of what happens when government replaces religion, search “abandoned churches Russia.”

Here is a favorite (although the picture might have been tuned):

http://russiatrek.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/lipetsk-oblast-russia-sceneries-1.jpg

The left part of the picture indicates a long white bluff and a river below. The place has good grass. I mentioned to Priscilla the place needs a tractor and plows of various kinds – turning plow, disc, harrow, drill seed planter and so forth. She said, “It needs cows.” OK, those, too.

If the Bolsheviks had not tried to do away with religion, the churches might still be whole and celebrating today.

While doing the search I ran across a picture that mentioned Kotlas. That was a new one. A search for Kotlas shows a town in southeast Archangelsk Oblast.

Wikipedia says: “During the 1930s, Kotlas became a place to which kulaks were deported and made to work in the forestry industry. It was managed by the Kotlaslag division of Gulag. Later, it hosted all possible categories of people repressed during the Stalin era. A significant population of Poles existed in the area, with whole Polish villages resettled here in 1920s and 1930s.

“Labor camps existed within the territory of the city until 1953. Besides logging and paper industry, the occupation of inmates were plant, housing, bridge, and railroad construction. Most of camps were unguarded barrack settlements. In addition, Kotlas was a major transit point for deportees transferred further to the north and east, since it was a railroad terminus.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kotlas

Kulaks, according to Lenin, were “bloodsuckers, vampires, plunderers of the people and profiteers, who fatten on famine.” (“Comrade Workers, Forward to The Last, Decisive Fight!”)

http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/aug/x01.htm


For more on “all possible categories of people repressed during the Stalin era,” there are a number of searches that will link to the millions deported, imprisoned and outright murdered in the name of Soviet liberation.

A side note: After reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, I did a little checking and determined that 95 million Russian/Soviet citizens died from war and famine/starvation/exile between the 1905 revolution and Stalin’s death in 1953. That time includes World Wars I and II, the civil war, the purges and various arrests and executions after the last world war.

There is no reason for a Russian to trust government.